Led by the sadistic Caleb, the Regulators are a vicious gang that serves as the "police force" of Adytum in Southern California. Nominally under the authority of Adytum's mayor, Jon Zimmerman, they in fact manipulate Zimmerman and control Adytum's affairs, ruling harshly, expropriating a good part of Adytum's industrial wealth for themselves, and enforcing forced labor on Adytum's citizens.

To legitimize their authority, they have claimed that the Blades, a survivalist group to the north, are a threat, and frame them for crimes, such as the murder of Jon Zimmerman's son, Jason Zimmerman.

In the initial design of Adytum, the Regulators were the police force of the town, tasked with keeping the town safe from outside gangs such as the nearby Blades. Leonard Boyarsky felt that the motif of a town besieged by gangsters had been overdone, and suggested rewriting the design to flip the stereotype, making the nearby gangs fairly passive while putting the town under the heel of an authoritarian and draconian "police" force.[1]